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FLORIDAS L ARGEST STREET NEWSPAPER
If you received this issue of the Homeless Voice in your mailbox please go to pg 4
COSAC Foundation | PO Box 292-577 Davie, FL 33329 | 954-924-3571
A homeless ‘resort’ now faces pushback from Polk County officials Monivette Cordeiro
Sean Cononie is dozing off mid-sentence again. The founder of the COSAC Foundation, which offers services to homeless individuals, has gotten about two to three hours of sleep each night for weeks after moving to the outskirts of Haines City, a municipality in Polk County about 40 miles from Orlando. He makes an honest attempt each night to get some rest, but sooner or later his cellphone pings or someone wakes him up to handle an issue that has arisen for the homeless people who live at his Stay Plus Inn on U.S. Highway 27. The 51-year-old runs on cigarettes and Nestea iced teas as he deals with minor matters, like a disabled resident not charging his electric wheelchair, to major ones, like the relationship between his “homeless resort” and local officials. Toward the end of the day, he’s exhausted, but he wouldn’t change a thing. “At least 10 times a day my staff and I will look at each other in awe, thinking, why are we doing this?” he says. “This is where I’m supposed to be.” Cononie moved to Polk County in April, bringing with him 112 homeless people from Hollywood after the South Florida city paid him $4.8 million to leave town. It purchased the homeless shelter he was running there, much to the city’s consternation, and
then his residents told him Polk County Sheriff’s Ofbanned him from moving back for the next 30 years. Equal fice deputies were stopping them, asking them how parts abrasive and loving, Cononie did for many years what much they paid to Cononie from their incomes. other shelters in South Florida could not – like take in, some“Before we got here, they were already claiming we times for free, people who are too old or too poor, chronically were doing human trafficking,” he says. “I thought homeless, people with mental disabilities, those who have been that this being a very Christian county and Sheriff kicked out of other shelters or who have addiction problems. Grady Judd being a Christian, they would be a little The shelter he ran in Hollywood, Cononie says, was self-suffimore welcoming.” cient and used zero tax dollars. It paid its bills by having homeOn May 1, Cononie says a resident at the inn called less people sell Cononie’s newspaper, The Homeless Voice, on for an ambulance that arrived street corners. quickly, but when he called Hollywood wanted Cononie out ever a little while later for a since he converted a former nudist hotel Before we got here, they were one resident who was in his office into a homeless shelter in 2002, and the a hard time breathing, city unsuccessfully sued him in an effort already claiming we were doing having a Haines City ambulance arto shut the shelter down. He settled with rived and sat in his parking lot the city this year and bought the 125human trafficking room Stay Plus Inn, located in unincorfor more than 30 minutes. porated Polk County, because he liked Both Haines City’s City the facility and the $2 million price tag. Manager Jonathan Evans and He calls his hotel a “homeless resort” and provides low-income the city’s public safety director, Rick Sloan, say the housing, ranging from free to $24 per day, to his guests. ambulance was told by the county dispatching servicBut since he’s gotten here, there have been various issues with es not to enter the building. Carrie Eleazer Horstman, Polk County officials, issues that seemed to have started before spokeswoman for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, he even arrived. said the ambulance was staged nearby in the parking Cononie says he was greeted with food baskets and invitalot for 37 minutes because they were waiting to be tions to lunch for the first couple of days after he arrived, but cleared to go in by dispatch. The call taker, she says,
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(Continued on pg 4)